Christmas Missiletoad

What could be more festive than mistletoe. Sadly it is illegal to gather wild plants in the UK, the plant itself is rare, it's toxic to humans and animals and real mistletoe is generally a bad idea.

I'm not sure that we even have the stuff in NZ as our biosecurity might have kept such a parasitic plant out of the country.

So we have decided to decorate with missiletoad instead. A jolly frog atop a tomahawk cruise missile may seem rather jarring but that is merely due to its unfamiliarity. I'm sure that a sprig of mistletoe looked similarly unusual several thousand years ago and so if we want to introduce this modern, long-lasting, legal, non-toxic alternative then the sooner we begin, the sooner it will be a three-thousand year-old tradition.

Not only that, but by the application of a suitable piece of paper backing it can also convey festive greetings, replacing the boring "Christmas card".

Laser cutter

Colour inkjet

Cricut

Sellotape

Gold cord

To get a frog sitting atop a cruise missile, we need to draw a frog and a cruise missile.

Problem:- I can't draw.

Solution:- find an appropriate image, import that into LibreOffice Draw and then trace over it!

It took a few goes to get everything right:-

• The frog was moved aft a couple of times before the hanging point matched the centre of mass and the missile sat straight and level.
• The variability in thickness of the plywood meant that a detente had to be devised in order for the wind and tailplane to be held securely. In both cases this meant laser-etching a small block (in red in the image) and then making a small protuberance in the mating piece to engage with that.
• The hole for the hanging thread had to be sized, which was made easier by laser-cutting a small test piece with a variety of hole sized cut into it.
• The overall size of the background piece was chosen to maximise the number of pieces which could be cut from a single piece of 400x600mm plywood while fitting into the smallest (and cheapest postage) size of envelope recognised by NZ Post.

Original image source and credit.

The missile was traced from these URLs which are stated as "No known copyright"

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/45634169724

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/45444681305

Both images are US government and therefore are probably OK to use, unless they were never properly declassified, in which case it's the big house for everyone.

The frog was traced from https://clipartix.com/frog-clip-art-image-10258 which is stated as public domain.

In both cases the tracing process has introduced sufficient alterations that the drawing could be regarded as a derivative work.

The SVG file for the laser is attached. To help the folk running the cutter, the red is used to indicate etching (lines and detente), the light blue for the first to be cut (small pieces like the hanging loop), the mid-blue for the second-pass cutting (wings and tailplane) and the black for the final cut (fuselage and card outline).

A number of ways of painting were tried. The first test cruise missiles were white, and white paint is available, so I decided to go with that. Painting the individual pieces post-cutting was tried, but it was very fiddly and messy, and so the alternative of painting the whole sheet of wood and then cutting it was chosen.

Sadly, I forgot to photograph this step, but it's painting a sheet of wood (on both sides). I used normal interior low-gloss paint, one primer/undercoat and two top coats. The safety data sheet was checked to make sure that there weren't any nasties which would cause problems and the result was fine. You will need to check the data sheets for whatever paints you use.

Once the painted wood was cut, I had a big stack of cards, all stuck together with the gunk which a laser makes when cutting ply. To clean that off, I just used water with a drop of washing-up liquid in it and it came off a treat. Cleaning both sides of a huge stack was actually quite quick, especially once I learned to fit all the pieces into the card before wiping down. A peelable cover applied to the wood before cutting might have worked, but peeling that off would have been fiddly and probably taken longer. Once all the cards were wiped, they were racked up to allow them to dry off.

The frogs were printed out onto paper by the CriCut programme for "Print and Cut". The .PNG file used is attached, which provided nine pairs of frogs per sheet. Printing onto US Letter paper might not have the space required, and so the second .PNG is provided, which only fits six pairs.

Please note that the frogs are asymmetric! They only fit the wood in one orientation, which is with the white dot in the eye towards the aft of the fuselage!

I used a watered-down PVA to stick the paper to the painted wood. Put some white glue into a container and add about two-thirds of that amount of warm water. Mix it up and use a paintbrush to apply a very small amount the watered glue to the wood, covering the entire area of contact. Apply the paper frog (correct one!), press down with your fingers all round and then rack them up to dry.

Once the glue is dry (give it a couple of hours), turn over and repeat for the other side.

If one trims the Christmas tree, why should one not trim the Christmas Missletoad.

The CriCut is a marvelous machine, but there are some things which are best done by hand.

The sharp internal angle made by the frog's thighs caused tearing when the CriCut did it, so I redesigned the image to have a smooth curve there. Two small nicks with a craft knife, sliding the blade along the edge of the laser-cut timber, remove a tiny triangle of paper and give the required shape.

The tiny hole for the hanging thread took a long time and often tore the paper, so that was removed from the CriCut file and the hole was just punched through with a pencil tip.

Lastly, the sharp internal angles for the wing-root caused problems so three little cuts with the craft knife were used instead, again using the edge of the wood to guide the blade. Making the long cut at the top of the wing-root first gave the best results.

This task needs to be done twice for each card, so that each side is trimmed.

I bought a reel of thin gold cord to provide a hanging loop.

In order to give a neat end, and to allow it to be fed through the hanging hole in the frog's forehead, this had to be fitted with aglets.

I drew out a piece of cord as long as the width of a sheet of A4 paper, and then pressed it against the overhanging end of the sellotape. Then I cut off a couple of cm or 3/4" and wrapped that around the cord as tightly as I could. This left a section of the cord wrapped with tape, which was then cut with scissors at the middle of the tape, leaving two cut ends, each with a short aglet.

Feed that through the hole-in-the-toad and a simple knot gives a reasonable hanging loop.

Just popping the pieces into an envelope and posting them would result in them being shaken from their places and end up with thick envelopes, jammed sorting machines and general unhappiness. Since we need to include assembly instructions, and an address for the envelope _and_ festive felicitations, we solve all those problems with a single sheet of paper.

I've enclosed ODT and PDF for this, but you will probably want to make your own.

The paper is glued to the wooden frame, so that when unfolded the assembly instructions are clearly visible and the recipient can refer to them as they remove the components and assemble the missiletoad.

This prevents the pieces falling out of the back of the frame.

Use the same watered-down white glue as before, apply a thin layer to the rear of the frame, press that to the paper and leave to dry. Make sure that you glue the correct "back" of the frame, so that it sits in the correct orientation above the image of the assembly instructions.

Once that is dry, use a couple of pieces of masking tape to prevent the wooden pieces from falling from the front of the frame. I used a low-tack masking tape, which happened to be purple. I had performed some tests involving heavy weights and some considerable time in order to have confidence that this tape would peel off without damaging the paint when it was removed.

The print files are designed in such a way that folding them tightly around the wooden frame will leave the address panel visible when the completed card is put into an envelope. You will need to check, test and adjust the position of the address panel depending on your envelopes.

I've spent most of this year designing these things, and they have changed a lot from the first prototype which was made in February. I've made and given about eighty of them and the reception has made it all worthwhile.

Most of the time has been spent in "design for manufacture" which was an entirely new discipline for me as I've never made eighty of a project before.

Discovering the CriCut machine was a revelation, although learning how to use it while avoiding its quirks took a while.

Gluing the sheet of paper to the rear of the frame and using that as half of the hold-in-place mechanism was a breakthrough, as was the testing of various masking tapes.

I'm going to do something similar next year, and it's going to be a much quicker and simpler process with all that I've learned on this one. (Famous last words).